Freedom – YOU And YOUR MONEY®http://money.ca/you_and_your_money
Canadian financial writers on personal finance.Thu, 08 Dec 2016 06:30:53 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.5.4IT’S ALL ABOUT FREEDOM.http://money.ca/you_and_your_money/2014/03/13/its-all-about-freedom/
Thu, 13 Mar 2014 20:57:23 +0000http://money.ca/you_and_your_money/?p=4282No one is handed freedom on a silver platter. According to noted author and professor, Dr. W.W. Dyer. “You must make your own freedom. If someone hands it to you, it is not freedom at all, but the alms of a benefactor who will invariably ask a price of you in return.”

Freedom means that you are unobstructed in ruling your own life as you choose. Anything less is a form of slavery. If you cannot be unrestrained in making choices, in living as you dictate, in doing as you please with your environment (provided your freedom does not interfere with anyone else’s freedom), you are under command by forces stronger than you.

To be free does not mean denying your responsibilities to your loved ones and your fellow man. Indeed, it includes the freedom to make choices to be responsible. But nowhere is it dictated that you must be what others want you to be when their wishes conflict with what you want for yourself. Have a sense of freedom that does not mean that you shirk your responsibilities to your friends, family or community.

Most of the people who will try to tell you that you cannot, who will label your desire for freedom “selfish”, will turn out to have measures of authority over your life, and will certainly be protesting your threat to the holds you have allowed them to have on you. If they can help you feel selfish, they have contributed to your feeling of guilt, and immobilized you.

You must become the master of your own destiny. If you are not, you are not free. You do not need to be powerful or exert influence over others to be free, nor is it necessary to intimidate others, nor [to try to] bully people into submission in order to prove who is master.

The freest people in the world are those who have senses of inner peace about themselves. They refuse to be swayed by the whims of others, and are quietly effective at running their own lives. These are responsible people, but they are not enslaved by other people’s interpretations of what responsibility should be. This level of responsibility is to god, self, family and the community.

I will not pretend that the new forces of Unions have not restricted the freedom enjoyed by myself or by all of us. The adversarial association between employer and employee has resulted in an infinite amount of lost people working hours, and an unhappy work environment that results in disgruntled employees.

There is a better way.

There is a dire need to encourage individuals to spend, invest and work, instead of penalizing them when they do. Unions want to restrict commerce. Attempts to negotiate with the unions only result in more downsizing and corporate bankruptcies. We are all learning that a service economy must be driven by a productive manufacturing economy.

Real wealth, which comes from people’s ability to commercialize and develop new and exportable technologies, creates jobs and allows government to foster those socially necessary programs that provide new jobs and security for employees. The re-arranging, manipulation, and accumulation of capital does not provide us with new taxable income or the real creating of wealth.

For those individuals that do not want to provide equal value for equal pay should have their fellow employees drive them out. For those that want to work harder and produce more an additional yearly profit sharing program should be implemented. Those in the unit that did not want to work should not drag down those that do. Lets face it, superstars make more money and so they should.

Unions threaten the freedom of Canadians in this highly competitive and global market place. Their role has been vastly diminished. They are dinosaurs that add little or no value to organizations or their people.

Any force, group or individual that threatens your freedom needs to be informed of their breach, even if it means putting your very livelihood or life on the line. People that want to build, grow and produce should not be taxed to death when they do so. They should standup and be counted. We need producers of all kinds. The laggards can sit on the sidelines.

One of the great American states has the following words blazoned on their License Plates, “Live Free or Die”. Freedom is worth fighting for, even if it takes a lifetime and great sacrifice. God help those people that threaten my freedom.

By: Mark Borkowski is president of Toronto based Mercantile Mergers & Acquisitions Corporation. He can be contacted at www.mercantilemergersacquisitions.com